May 27, 2025 • 57 mins
S3 E18 - Chris Phillips - Dish Soap Sommelier - is Tromedy about having his mouth washed out with dish soap for cursing as a child, which is just one form of abuse that escalated after his father was killed in the Edmond Post Office Shooting. Chris is a writer and budding comedian who shares how EMDR trauma therapy has helped him immensely and how watching and writing comedy is another way to redirect and transmute trauma triggers.
Reach Out: https://www.nancynorton.tv/
https://www.chrisphillipscomedy.com/
Follow Chris Phillips: https://www.instagram.com/chrisphillipscomedy/
https://www.bradyunited.org/resources/research/mental-health-impact-mass-shootings
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
You're listening to Traumedy, the podcast that helps you take
your pain and play with it. I'm Nancy Norton.
I'm a comedian, used to work as a registered nurse, and now I'm
a keynote speaker about the power of humor and I still
travel as a comedian. I'll be out there with Moms
Unhinged in Madison, WI in Waterloo June 18th and 19th.
(00:27):
Oh, got a local thing here. June 6th in the Denver area.
Denver Tonight talk show with Jacob Rupp and Miriam Moreno and
then I'll be out at the Comedy Factory in Branson, MO.
Go to my website nancynorton.tv.Click on upcoming shows.
It should show you my link tree with all those shows.
(00:48):
Anyway, love to see you out there.
This week we have a wonderful new comedian on the scene who
opened up to me about a trauma 'cause I talk about trauma DA
lot and I want to take this live.
I want to start doing Trauma D live where we will take your
pain and help you play with it. This episode deals with gun
(01:09):
violence, mass shooting, and a lot of humor on top of it.
Like your style of story. Like the kicking the gun out
makes perfect sense. Like I'm sure you would love to
be the hero that goes in and interrupts this massacre.
Yeah. And I lived in Columbia for a
year. And I always had this idea of,
like, if somebody did come, I would just, like, beat him in
(01:32):
the face and be this amazing person.
And when I was living in Columbia for a year, I went to
this Frito shop where you get fried foods.
At the time, might have been like 30-4 cents, like that's how
much it cost. So I have my mil peso coin.
I'm practicing my sentence queeron a carabagnola de queso port 5
(01:53):
or. And as I I'm in my world
practicing my sentence, a man with a revolver pulled it out
and just emptied it behind the counter.
And I'm in flip flops and shortsrunning like a little bitch.
Like I'm like, I did not walk through Texas Ranger.
I like, yeah. I love your fight flight freeze
(02:14):
kicked in. You flip-flopped out of there.
I did indeed. I bet you're you made the sounds
too that the flip flop. Oh yeah, yeah, that'd be.
AI think the first sound was and.
It is traumedy, it is taking some of the pain out of it,
lightening it up, raising the frequency, but just want you to
(02:35):
know what the subject matter is.Deals with gun violence and a
mass shooting. And let me know.
Let me know if you have feedback.
You need something and enjoy this episode and I'll see you on
the other side. Welcome to Traumedy.
My guest this week is a writer, a comedian and someone I'm just
(03:01):
now getting to know. Welcome Chris Phillips,
everybody. Thank you for having me,
appreciate it. I always do the clapping.
I'll clap too, it'll sound like.We're in a full room.
Thanks for coming over on a rainy What is this when, what is
it? Wednesday.
A rainy Wednesday in Boulder andwe worked at a gig up in Conifer
Co. And you're from Fort Collins, is
(03:22):
that? I do live in Fort Collins now.
Yeah, I from Kansas. I moved from Boston about a year
ago and then I lived there like 6 years.
Really. I didn't know you were a a
Bostonian for a while. Bostonian adjacent.
I don't know if you know where Brookline is.
It's kind of out by Fenway and on the West and like, it's the,
(03:44):
it's the smarmy suburb of like, academia.
Or you bus in you bus into Cambridge.
No, 'cause actually everybody tries to get into that school
district out there. So people were busing to where I
lived. OK, I, you know, and I, this is
a great opportunity for me to remind folks that I won the
(04:05):
Boston Comedy Festival in 2018. I mean, it was a miracle.
No, seriously. It was kind of 'cause I was
like, you know, the first femaleto win it, but then also 58
years old and this really young handsome dude was playing this
guitar song that was so funny and so lovable but I can't
(04:28):
explain it. There was like 3 rows of these
MIT people and I closed with thePi sexual joke and I was like I
win. Did you shout out I win at the
end of your set? Because that's, that's a power
move, Nancy. First of all.
That's a great like, I don't even know the joke, but I know
that the joke was great. I have sex every 3.14159 years.
(04:53):
Nice. And I, where's my bisexuals?
We're going to March out here onsummer, you know, Somerville
Square or wherever we were. And I'm like, we're going to
March in a big circle, divide ourselves by our diameter.
You know, it was a really fun MIT guys like I whatever I was
like the higher power just handed me that victory, right?
Yeah. But anyway, thank you for
(05:14):
letting me reminisce. I'll probably cut that part out.
I do edit it. So if there's anything you want
to back up and say it differently, make.
Me sound smart and post if you want me just to say indubitably
a couple times you put that in in response to something you say
I'm I can use all the help I canget got it.
You got to teach me. I want to win a competition.
In a festival like that. So.
(05:34):
OK, you do. You want to.
Yeah. I mean, it is a weird thing.
Festivals are weird. It's weird when art gets
competitive. Yeah.
And at. The same time I want to win and
be a champion, I want I want a ribbon and a certificate of
participation in. My heart what I just to add so I
can be very humbled by that. I I wanted to do a late night
(05:57):
talk show since I was four yearsold and I had never done one
here. I was 58.
And I'm like, oh, I'm going to go practice doing 4 1/2 to 5
minutes under pressure and see if I could, you know, get a set
that I could send to The TonightShow.
And then the Colbert talent coordinator was supposed to be
one of the judges. And I was like, Oh my gosh, if I
(06:19):
could get on Colbert before I die, this would be amazing.
And the finals came and she did not show up.
And I've still not done a late night talk show, probably never
will. So there you go.
There's the balance of life. What does it mean?
It was just an idea from when I was a kid and.
Did you watch all the late showsgrowing up?
What drew you to that as your? Dream yeah, as a kid and my dad
(06:40):
liked to laugh so I think that made me think that's where you
get your value is if I can make people laugh.
And my father had trauma and we're going to talk about if.
I don't know if we want to jump right in, but as I said that I
felt my heart hurt a little bit because I had a dad growing up
and his dad died in an explosionwhen he was 7.
(07:03):
And so my dad grew up with that and his sister was also in the
explosion. So he lost his sister and his
dad when he was 7. And I know it changed him, but
I, I know this about my dad. He just, his handle on the CB
radio was happy hour. He wasn't really an alcoholic,
but he did have happy hour everyday.
(07:23):
And he's like, let's just be happy, you know?
And I was curious. So you messaged me and, you
know, about traumedy and we did the comedy together and you
messaged me and said that you lost your dad.
What happened? Yeah, so when I was 4, my dad
was an Air Force guy, did 23 years and then retired.
(07:44):
And then back in the day you could stack pensions.
So went to work for the post office and that was the 80s.
So he worked at the Edmond post office and in 1986, fourteen
people were shot and killed. And then the gunman shot himself
also. And it was kind of a thing where
(08:07):
the culture of the post office was like a cool corporation.
They pushed people and got maximum efficiency and like the
the upper management was the cool kids club and they just
ripped this guy apart. The shooter.
Yeah, the shooter was Patrick Cheryl.
(08:28):
And he was just, it was like a glass room.
Everybody could see it. They just basically verbally
beat him down. And he came in one or two days
later. He told somebody.
He called them and said, hey, don't go to work tomorrow.
They had no idea what was going on.
It wasn't a common enough thing to be a red flag at the time,
but anyway. So he was in the break room.
(08:51):
I just want to clarify that yourdad was like hanging out in the
break room and and it's interesting that you lead with
the compassion for the shooter. Has that brought you some sort
of like healing to have forgiveness or something like
that? Honestly not really.
I like it. Just helped, I think as I've
grown up a bit because when you're 4, you hear a bad guy
(09:13):
went and killed your dad. And then it's like, you know, I
didn't know my dad. So it was kind of this, he's the
good guy. I don't have any context for him
being a human with flaws, that kind of a thing.
And then the other guy is it's almost like a a comic book.
You have a very two-dimensional good guy and a very
two-dimensional bad guy. And then since it was such a
(09:34):
public murder, there been shows there been research into it.
So I have more of that context of this was a guy.
And while I can't condone his actions or say, man, I would
forgive him and have a beer withhim if he were still alive,
right? At the same time, I have to
understand it from a human context that there were things
(09:55):
that led to this. It wasn't just one guy who
snapped in an isolated event. It was, you know, failings of
society, that kind of a thing. So that's kind of as I'm mature,
I try to think of it from the holistic lens, not just that,
you know, four years old. Comic book that's a great
analogy. I really appreciate you sharing
(10:16):
that. I know I'm I've been trying to
work on getting what I call the eagle eye view of things and
getting but I don't know in my recovery work too.
Sometimes they'll, they'll say, Oh well, I'm dissociating 'cause
sometimes it helps me get out ofmy one perspective of things and
I I, I'm just curious. So you said you didn't know your
(10:38):
dad at 4:00, but you just mean 'cause you were only four?
Or did he? Live.
He lived. No, I, I, I'm I knew him.
I had a relationship with him asany 4 year old would.
But you, you don't remember muchfrom from being four.
I have some glimpses, but I don't have a concrete
personality I can assign to thatperson.
Did you work hard as you grew upor did your mom help you to know
(11:01):
him better or or was it not allowed to talk about like in my
family, those kind of things, wejust shut, we bottle that down
and don't talk about it. Yeah, my mom was very broken
after everything, so it like I couldn't play with guns in the
house. Like even if they were toys.
I if we talked about Dad, excuseme, there would be at least like
(11:26):
1020 minutes of her crying. So, you know, it was just you,
you avoided it. She'd bring it up sometimes
because she was trying to do that, letting us know or
remember and work through grief.We all went to counseling paid
for by the post office. So, you know, she was trying to
make some of those active, taking initiative on that.
(11:48):
But at the same time, yeah, you don't, you don't bring that up,
but because you don't want to. You don't want to hear that.
And that hearing her cry is triggering too, because you you
relate that to the funeral and the service kind of stuff too.
Well, I mean, and do you have siblings?
I have a brother. I don't talk to my family very
(12:08):
much anymore. There's for about a year.
Kind of had a falling out. He lives in Missouri.
He's about four years older thanme, but after everything, I grew
up kind of in fear of him because he was going through
trauma. So he didn't, he didn't take
anything off me. He would like, you know, he'd
punch me sometimes, hold me to the ground to kind of in a
(12:30):
dominant. I don't know how to describe it
because it was weird, but but yeah, yeah.
But just but like maybe that washis his his reactive trauma was
to dominate you and like take out his anger and rage on you
for. Sure, yeah.
Whoa, man, that's a lot. Yeah, and I, you know, I just
(12:51):
kind of under it was my normal. It was like these people are
going through this same thing I'm going through.
So even though I was angry, I didn't particularly like it.
That's that's my brother and yougot.
Such a nice disposition over here.
You know, I didn't particularly like it.
Yeah, on second thought, let's not do that.
(13:11):
No, honestly, being able to talkabout it all was the result of a
lot of therapy. So it's not like I just, I was
like, hey, you should stop doingthat.
I'm an evolved person. Like there was a lot of of rope
between here and there for sure.I was going to say cuz that is a
long childhood. Yeah.
(13:32):
Of dealing with that. Yeah.
Like there's a there's a I don'twant.
I was just trying to think of the right word.
There's an, you know, an abuser in your home.
Four years is significant. I have a sister who's five years
older and in my mind, she felt like kind of like an adult
almost because she was enough older.
At what point I mean, did you notice you started using maybe
humor to help you or did you just?
(13:55):
You know, as I get older too, I think, what would I be like
without the trauma? Like, would I still be a happy,
humorous guy? And now I have a daughter who's
7. She's my exact copy and like
it's weird because my wife is Colombian, very brown person and
I have the whitest with a capital WH child who looks
exactly like me. My mom used to say I hope
(14:17):
someday you have a kid just likeyou and she she is apparently a
voodoo witch and did a very goodjob on that hex.
But. Like and she's I bet amazing.
Yeah, she doesn't have all my pre loaded drama and like years
of patterned abuse. So I'm seeing her and she laughs
at everything. She talks to herself, tell
(14:38):
stories and I'm like, oh, I probably would have been like
this anyway, but I it was an escape for me.
I grew up watching Comedy Central.
I don't watch the late shows very much, but like reruns of
Saturday Night Live. Big huge Bobcat Goldthwaite fan.
Felt like those guys kind of, you know, like raised me so.
(15:00):
So they they were like your friends.
They were like your Oasis in thein the storm of all this other
stuff for. Sure, yeah.
Bobcat. Yeah, Interesting.
I. Love the the thing he did with
his voice in between jokes or. He was very.
Unique. And then he'd just throw a
haymaker of a good joke out there and it'd be like, yeah.
(15:21):
He was one of the most unique. Or is, I guess still right,
Still is one of the most unique voices in comedy.
With that, does he still do the thing?
I haven't seen him in a while. He does.
It's like if you go see him live.
I saw him in Omaha once. It's less pronounced than than
when he was doing it in like police Academy, but he he still
(15:41):
does it from time to time. I can see why a kid would like
that too. If you're dealing with all this
stuff, like underneath, like it's a, it's like a, you know,
like I'm doing funny stuff, but it's like I'm barely holding it
together. And I, I kind of get how that
could, you know, vibe. You could vibe with that like
this kind of like, I'm going to lose it if I don't like do
something. And he's delivering these
(16:02):
sarcastic lines. Like, to me, Kinison was too
much. He's just like, rage.
Here's a stream of rage, just constant.
Yeah, like Bobcat was like a stream of snark on with with a
little bit of rage bubbling under there, but it never just
flowed. So.
So you get a little, yeah, you get a little break from it, kind
of. Yeah.
I could see what you're saying, yeah.
Because Kinison was more like a fire hydrant of just.
(16:27):
Yeah, Well, interesting that youfound those guys so early.
And how about at school and stuff for friends?
And did you or did you do a lot of make sounds like you're
highly creative. You're a writer.
Did you do a lot of kind of makebelieve stuff or fantasy stuff
as a kid? For sure.
And some of it was comedy and some of it was me, like, you
(16:49):
know, Walker, Texas Ranger, likekicking the gun out of
somebody's hand and like solvingall my my problems that way.
But yeah, I always just kind of fell back into my thoughts.
And again, I've always had to question, is that just me or is
that me reacting to trauma? And I, I think in a large part
it is me, but I also use that with my trauma.
(17:12):
A lot of just I'm going to go over here and think about this
thing. Like your style of story, like
the kicking the gun out makes perfect sense.
Like I'm sure you would love to be the hero that goes in and
interrupts this massacre. Yeah.
And I lived in Columbia for a year, and I always had this idea
of like, if somebody did come, Iwould just, like, beat him in
(17:32):
the face and be this amazing person.
And when I was living in Columbia for a year, I went to
this Frito shop where you get fried foods.
And I was like, you know what, I'm gonna go, It's 7:00 is dark,
but I'm gonna get myself Caravanola.
It's this little cheese potato mashed thing.
Oh, it sounds. Good.
(17:53):
It very much is. Cheese is and crispy.
Is it fried? Yeah, straw fried.
It's salt cheese and it's. Yeah, yeah.
My weakness. Yeah.
And it fat and salt and crispy. At the time might have been like
30-4 cents like that's how much it cost.
So I have my mil peso coin. I'm practicing my sentence
Corona Cara manuela de queso porta 5 or and as I I'm in my
(18:16):
world practicing my sentence, a man with a revolver pulled it
out and just emptied it behind the counter and I'm in flip
flops and shorts running like a little bitch.
Like I'm like, I did not walk through Texas Ranger.
I like, yeah. I love your fight flight freeze
kicked in. You flip-flopped out of there.
I did. Indeed, I bet you're you made
(18:39):
the sounds too though. The flip flop.
Oh yeah, yeah, that'd be. AI think the first sound was and
then it. Was that was out of your anus?
Yeah, yeah, both ends, ears and nostrils, all of it at once.
So yeah, it was because my culture of, of being an American
(19:00):
with random gun violence is thatif somebody comes and starts
shooting, they're shooting at everybody.
And everybody in Colombia is like, well, at least you are
safe. And I'm like, what do you mean
you didn't know that guy? Money.
And it's like, oh, you don't actually have the same worries
here I am. You worry about getting robbed
or owing someone money. Or being, you know, a a hostage,
(19:22):
I guess, kidnapped for a ransom.Yeah, I know.
That's not uncommon in some of the South American countries.
I don't know if Colombia, I think.
Is that that was the the one where it was famed?
But generally that would have been like tourists.
So, you know, so the locals. Not someone in the flip flop
like you gotta look like you gotmoney.
Yeah, but still, the fact that you're saying it's different
(19:44):
because there's not random acts of violence.
There's specific reasons they'recoming after you.
You were fine because you didn'towe him money.
Yeah, I didn't know that at the time.
I ran like a bitch and I I got like back to the apartment.
I hung a sheet over the window. I was I watched too many movies,
Nancy. And I was worried that they were
(20:05):
going to be like the gringo saw what happened and then they
would have to like silence the witness and my wife's like,
sweetheart, the the police aren't coming to ask you any
questions. They don't.
They said they're going to investigate the bruises.
There were there were 12 people who watched what happened.
No, no one's coming for you. And I'm like.
OK. It took, yeah, it took a while
for you to believe that? Probably, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Well, also just, I mean React, I
(20:27):
mean that's got to retrigger. Oh yeah.
I was thinking, oh, I'm going toleave Gabby and and Audrey
alone, just like I Yeah, yeah. Wow.
Yeah. Well, I like when fight flight
freeze takes over. You know, I'm a, I'm a big fan.
I'm a big fan of your intuition like or that immediate midbrain
it and it acts so much faster than your frontal lobe.
(20:48):
I suppose if you were in the military or had rehearsed and
rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed, maybe you can
override the midbrain. But like my dad survived that
explosion because he had rehearsed it in his mind that if
there was ever an explosion at the train track where they
offloaded this gasoline, he would book it down the tracks.
And he did. He turned and.
(21:09):
And he lived. And you lived.
I mean, who knows? Had you stayed there?
We don't know. Yeah, but so.
But it. It's but I can't outrun the gun,
Nancy. I'm pretty sure he just chose
not to shoot me. I don't know, I mean, I used to
have a long distance runner so I, I always would tour around
and I would run every town and alot of times I would think where
(21:29):
am I? I don't even 'cause you know,
you run long distance, sometimesyou end up I, I got lost a few
times on mountain bikes and stuff.
But I did read in Runners magazine to always run if
somebody pulls a gun because thepeople aren't as good at
shooting it as they think. For sure.
I mean, you don't have to do theSerpentine thing, but just book
it, yeah. 'Cause I didn't do a Serpentine
thing, didn't do it, didn't do that many law girls.
(21:51):
No, I ran around a corner and then I saw a couple walking and
I was trying to remember the word for gun.
And I start yelling arma, arma. And they look at me like, bro, I
don't know this guy money, you know, they, they understood they
weren't in danger, but they're. They're like people in Kansas
when there's a tornado warning, right?
And they just kind of shrug, like, yeah, well, you know, they
don't go in the basement. They've there's so many tornado
(22:13):
warnings. Maybe Kansas and I'm the only
one. I would be like, OK, I hear this
siren and everyone else is like,let's look at it from behind
glass. I'm like, that's not how wind
works. Good.
That's not how wind works indubitably well, I I really
(22:35):
appreciate you. I mean sharing this because wow.
I mean also I was thinking that term going postal is not cute to
you. You know, like how people throw
stuff around and. I've heard it a few times.
Yeah, 2000 and it's like, no, that if, if you really, you
(22:57):
know, felt that there's so many things in our culture like that,
I guess that's part of, I mean, that's just part of being in
this culture, you know. But does it like, how do you
ever, what do you do? Just kind of like, grin and bear
it I guess. Yeah, I used to.
So like I said, to get to where I am now, it took a long, long
road of therapy and thinking about it.
(23:18):
And I, I used to, I remember when I was 30 and I was going
through a divorce, I was marriedbefore and I went and got some
therapy and some help. And the therapist in my first
session was like, hey, you haven't talked about your
parents at all. And so what's going on with
that? And I brought up the thing and I
(23:38):
just factually said what had happened.
And he goes, OK, thanks for sharing that with me.
I want you to look at your fist right now.
I had no idea it was clenched. I was red in the face.
And so he's like, you need to dosomething called EMDR.
I don't know if you're familiar with it, but there's like a
light box and beeping noises andyou just kind of walk through
(23:59):
your trauma. You have a safe space that you
go to and he puts you there and says, Hey, go to your safe space
for a minute. I want you to know that you are.
That's not your fault. That's something.
And it sounds really simple. It's weird with the lights and
the the sounds. And then all of a sudden I can
talk about it and not like, curlup in a ball and freak out.
(24:19):
So it works. EMDR.
Are you familiar with Adam CatonHolland?
He's a local comedian and he came on the podcast.
He was he also, I've done EMDR and it's it's it's amazing what
happens. Like you said, it feels so
oversimplified, but somehow whenyou're listening to music that
(24:40):
crosses like from one side to the other or buzzers in your
hands, it crosses midline in your brain.
And then somehow while processing a trauma, you cannot
because we kind of wall those things off so we can't access
them cognitively. But when we do the combined with
the crossing midline activity, somehow we can integrate that
(25:02):
and not be taken over by it. There's no arguing with the
results. It just changed how I relate to
the trauma. And I I heard someone kind of
say that it's like taking the, like if you were to get a
gunshot wound, it's like taking the lead out and letting you,
you're still going to have scar tissue.
It's still like an injury that you have to heal from and might
(25:26):
impact you, but it's not still hurting and still, yeah, yeah.
And just burning and hurting and.
Causing very much was and so back to your question about like
when people bring it up or insensitive.
When Sandy Hook happened, I was a teacher, I taught English as a
second language and I was teaching 1st and 2nd grade
graders at that time. And in the teacher lounge, the
(25:49):
teacher came in and was just bawling about it just going on
and on. And I, you know, those kinds of
things happening in the fact that we've done nothing about
gun violence in the country for nearly 40 years since my father
was killed. You know, I couldn't add her
trauma to what I was feeling. So I just kind of looked at her
(26:11):
and was very straight and plain face and she looked at me and
thought I was judging her and was like, and then that night I,
I put out a like Facebook post. It was like, it's weird reading
about mass shootings and seeing your father's mass shooting is
one of the top ten in the country on on like a list.
And she saw me the next day. I was like, I'm so sorry.
(26:31):
I had no idea. You were like, I thought you
were just upset. I was upset.
And I'm like, no, I just don't know how to, like, take in other
people's emotions, mostly because, you know, if my mom
thinks about what happened, it'sjust tears and crying.
Yeah, so I OK, EMDR stands for Eye movement Desensitization and
(26:51):
reprocessing. I just needed to say that.
I don't know why. It's just amazing how these
things can can work if especially my son had a trauma
out here, got choked by a guy onthe streets in Boulder and I got
him into trauma therapy. She said the sooner the better.
So I just want to tell folks, I mean, your yours was many years,
but sometimes they can clear a trauma like that, integrate it
(27:15):
in one session. But if it's been years, then it
takes longer. Yeah, it honestly, I, I think I
went three or four times it, it was that impactful and that
quick that I just needed to. And, and that was one thing.
When I was 30 and went back to therapy, I was filling out an
intake form and it said were youabused?
(27:37):
And I was about to mark a no. And then I was like, wait a
second. I think my like, and I, I
mentioned my brother, but my momalso like made me drink liquid
dish soap would hit me. So there was a lot of just, you
know, they were. And the therapist also said
because I was like, well, you know, they were processing their
pain too. And the guys like, you know, I
(27:58):
don't, I don't think you wouldn't have.
I think you would have been abused at some point even if
this would never happen. And I was like, I don't know
that I agree to disagree. And now that you know, it's time
has passed, kind of want to be like, Sir, you're probably, I
apologize for giving me that look when you said that.
Well, but yeah, I mean, the point is it did happen and it
(28:21):
did, but it does add to it. I can say on my like the reason
I started trauma therapy is because of feeling reactive with
my son when he was just a littleguy and things would set me off
over the top. One time I had my fist drawn
back like that and I was like, what is wrong with me?
What is wrong with me? And so I was like, I got to find
(28:43):
a trauma therapist and this is where my spiritual woo woo thing
will come in. My friend Brian, who I've known
I had known for almost 2 decades, I was telling him I got
to find a trauma therapist and we were walking around Boulder
and he said, oh, my, my husband's college best friend or
something. It was a is a psychologist here
in Boulder and does trauma therapy.
(29:04):
And I swear to that moment, Melanie Young walked around the
corner. She came out of a store, called
into the wind. And he goes, wait, there's
Melanie right here. So I'm going to give a shout out
to Melanie Young, amazing traumatherapist who helped me with
EMD, not EMDR, but I said I asked her if she did EMDR
because I'd heard that's what I need.
(29:24):
And she said actually I do something even more efficient,
which is called brain spotting. But I don't know, we don't have
to compare EMDR and brain spotting.
All I know is it was amazingly helpful to me.
And then my next therapist took it to the next level with
psychedelic trauma therapy. So, but I, I think it's
sometimes easier to treat like an incident like that versus you
(29:47):
also had this other trauma as either an outcropping of it or
maybe it exacerbated their behaviour.
I would think so. Yeah, So anyway, that's why when
he said that, I was like, I can't because it almost just
made it sound like. And I think I got defensive
because I was like, well, my father was like killed in the
(30:08):
post office. I think that's going to have an
impact on something I you. Know the odds are pretty good.
That at that at some point, and the thing that is hard to
explain to people is, is not just the incident like in on in
August in 1986 when he died. It's like the people trying to
(30:30):
recover being broken after that.That is actually the trauma more
than because I, I don't remembermy dad dying.
I barely remember the funerals. You know, I, I kind of remember
mom telling us, but I don't, that's not what triggers me.
It's thinking about, you know, how they acted towards me and
took things out, not feeling safe as a kid, those kinds of
(30:53):
things. Not feeling safe.
So when you did you get out of the house as soon as possible
when you turned 18 or 17? I'm just curious.
My dad did. My dad got out of his house at
17. Join the Merchant Marines to get
out of the house. You know, and it's weird because
I didn't, I did, I did go to college and I went about 3 hours
(31:13):
away. I went to a small liberal arts
Christian School in the middle of Kansas.
But I would come home and I would be home sick.
Even though home was weird and broken growing up, but it was,
it was still home. It was where I remembered, you
know things. And I, I think too now that I've
kind of had a falling out with my family and I don't talk to my
brother or my mom anymore. It's like my wife would be like,
(31:36):
do you miss them? Do you feel?
How do you feel about it? And I'll just be like, I feel
bad because I should have a relationship with my mom or my
brother, and I can't because of how we relate to each other.
It's not healthy. But I feel sad that I don't have
that. And you know, her family is
fantastic. They have problems like any
(31:57):
other family. But like, you know, she talks to
her brother and their friends and the parents, you know, call
every every week, every other week.
I was like, you know, I, I, I want that idea of having a
family that that would feel normal, feel nice.
And I, so I think I was chasing that.
So I didn't just haul out of there.
(32:20):
My brother kind of did. He went to college, he came home
1 summer and then never again. And so I yeah, I probably should
have, probably would have been better in the long run just
because my mom still hasn't recovered.
But at that point, and I understand this too, that it's a
process of even recognizing and she had no distance from it.
(32:42):
And that's what's familiar. And that was home.
And, and I, I so relate to this kind of estrangement and I have
not cut anybody out, but I'm trying to have better
boundaries. And I know it's just so painful
like to let go of that. Like we were talking about
(33:03):
earlier, I was just like, man, that to have that kind of like
sister or brother who you feel is in your corner and you relate
to and you're you want to help each other.
I don't know, I just I've. Seen enough movies that I know
that that's what it is supposed to be.
And I see it and I'm like, oh, that.
That would be cool. Yeah.
And we would call each other on birthdays and it would just be
(33:26):
kind of quiet. Well, how about this?
Oh, yeah, this is good. And there just wasn't a
conversation wasn't a relationship.
And so when, you know, when we had our falling out, our
argument, it was just really easy to leave behind because I
never had that. Like I listened to my wife and
her brother talk and I don't understand the word of it
(33:47):
because it's in Spanish, but it's it's very like so loving
and you can. Feel it in your.
Heart, I'm like, what in the world is happening?
Yeah, I'm so glad that you got trauma therapy as a parent,
because it does. It makes us better parents, you
know, when we are able to be fully present and have that
heart access with your kids. And I'm sure that's been, I
(34:10):
think having kids has been really well, I only have one,
but it's been so healing for me to like give my son the things I
wanted. And probably I've
overcompensated I think a littlebit like sometimes I feel like I
should have. I don't know what I was going to
say, like I'm not as good at always holding him accountable
sometimes, but I wonder if that helped you too to finally go
(34:34):
wait, this is I can now see a healthy parent child
relationship. I mean, you met your wife, your
your you call her a stepdaughter.
She's but she's your daughter. She's, yeah, she's my kid and
she calls me father, which is weird because that's like the
biological term. But I'm not going to argue with
her so. And you know that that road took
(34:55):
some time too. She turned 15 and I was parental
unit #2. There's that phase.
And I got the trauma therapy before that relationship and all
that, those kinds of things. So did set it up nicely for me
to be able to. I'm still a mess, you know?
I still air, but I'm not like I can talk about it or I can
(35:19):
process it in a way where I'm not just spitting poison at
everybody all at once. Yeah, well, I I was remembering.
So we did a comedy together. When did so you just started
stand up like a year ago? Yeah, and that's, gosh, so.
And you're already like, I was feeling this when I was watching
like, wow, you're so comfortableon stage and you had a great
(35:42):
set. And I was just like, wow, when I
was a year in, man, I had cottonmouth.
My, you know, lips were stuck tomy teeth and stuff.
So that's cool that you're. Even after I'm like shaking from
adrenaline, but like during I just know that it's going to go
better if I just push through. And I'm, I think this is semi
(36:03):
trauma based too. I just practice.
I practiced for at least two hours that day.
I practice like, you know, half hour, hour every day on on some
piece of material. So when I get up there, it's
just putting out what I'm I'm really ready for because I'm
terrified. And so that you can do it by
rote. Yeah.
(36:23):
Because it is like, I know when I get on stage, I can go like, I
have ideas. I want to do this new bit.
And then I'm like, I forgot thatnew bit.
Yeah, no, I get aggravated. My, my new bit is like I've,
I've spent at least an hour saying the new bit.
So I'm never too worried about anew bit.
(36:44):
Sometimes, you know, at an open mic, it's not as high stakes and
I'll try something out, whether it be trauma based or not.
Some of it is, some of it isn't.I try to air towards absurdity
because that's kind of, I don't know, an escape.
I've always liked those kinds ofcomedians, like the amazing
(37:04):
Jonathan or Who's Mark Forward or somebody working now.
I don't know, I gotta watch these guys.
I don't watch enough comedy. If I need a mental health boost
or something, I watch Maria Bamford or Yeah.
Mark Forward is my guy for that and.
I gotta check him out. Yeah, for sure.
And he's like semi relatable butmore absurd.
(37:25):
And I try to do that. I've done some trauma based
comedy, but it doesn't, it makesme laugh.
But it, you know, it's hard because not everybody wants to
hear your trauma. They're at a comedy show, they
want to laugh, they want to do relatable stuff.
But when I start doing Traumedy as a show, I want to find
comedians like you who might be able to help, because that's
(37:46):
what I want to do is help peoplelike maybe audience members come
in and have a trauma they want to release.
I mean, it, it's a hot, it's a tall order, but it's like, but
we could help them cartoon theirpain a little bit or make it
absurd. Like give it that cartoony
aspect where it's so silly. It takes the the whimsy takes
the pain out of it. Yeah, I have a relatable bit
(38:08):
about cursing as a parent and how I don't want to curse so I
just go fire hydrogens of APSI of £20 per square inch and I
roll. That phone.
Into a fact as relatable. Everybody's been in a situation
where they want to curse. Can't.
Yeah, but need to. And I, I added to that and I had
(38:28):
about my mom making me drink dish soap every time I cursed
and how I was, you know, it was abusive.
But at the same time, I became the world's most foremost.
Just so Somalia I don't. Know.
How to pronounce that but indubitably make me sound?
Smart. Indubitably.
But it it was a really good bit in my opinion.
(38:50):
And then somebody else was like,yeah, you could work on that.
And I was like, you just, yeah, that's not relatable.
So. I think it's very relatable.
I like the whole concept of it, and I think it would be fun to
keep dragging it out and going. Let me tell you about, you know,
Dawn versus. Yeah.
What? What's another dish?
Is this Dawn? Did you bring this from a
(39:11):
Walmart? Get this away from me?
Cleanse my palate. What would.
Yeah. What would you use to cleanse
your palate between dish soap? You know, that's always the
challenge. Popcorn.
I know they use popcorn. Yeah, I was like, this is this
is Palmolive. I detect notes of lemon zest.
Yeah, yeah, I think it's fun. I mean, and you could present it
(39:32):
on the whatever you've got the little like this.
I always like thinking in cartoon like sketch kind of.
I love doing like that's what I do like doing.
I would say like bring it up andthen kind of act it out.
I think people love that, yeah. I'll I love it.
I did it one time at a mic and somebody told me that that was
the the weak ish part of the bit.
(39:53):
Oh, someone person, yeah, got to, got to be careful about
listening to people. Right.
You really do you. Have to you just and eventually
you listen more and more to yourself and the audience.
You know, I always say test material on larger groups, and
it's hard at Mike's too, becausewhen you're at Mike's you're
playing to other comics and it'sa totally different.
(40:15):
Like you, you present different material to comics than you do
to general audiences, I feel. I mean, they can both play, but
do you know what I'm saying? I do feel like this dish soap
thing is going to be perfect trauma T for you because it's
going to express it. But also, like, you know what?
How did she make you drink the soap?
(40:36):
Whatever you're just saying. Yeah.
So basically what would happen is anytime I cursed, she would
tell me, or, you know, at one point she told me when I cursed
when I was your age, I had to have a bar of soap.
They put a bar of soap in my mouth and she didn't have a bar
of soap. I don't know where we got to
liquid dish soap, but she would grab that and then just pour it
(40:57):
my mouth. I'd try to keep it closed.
She'd pinch it open and pour some of that in there.
So what ended up happening? My brother would be holding me
down or be hitting me, and she would come home and I would say,
this is what happened to me. And he would say, well, he
called me a fucking Dick head. And I'm like, yeah, you fucking
Dick head. Of course I did.
(41:17):
You're old. You were holding me down, that's
why I called you that. So and then she was like just
didn't tolerate cursing, which was also hilarious because she
like she would lose her keys anddo like 5 minutes of just like
she would sing the F word. It'd be like fuck, fuck, fuck,
fuck, fuck. She'd be hitting high notes like
Mariah Carey doing a crazy special.
(41:39):
And just so there was like, no, the the hypocrisy was just off
the charts, but I would get the dish soap.
So that's that's where that yeahcame from.
Yeah, He gets no punishment for causing you physical harm.
Sure. Yeah, but you.
But that is where the bound. That's where.
Oh, this is this is important that you were swearing and now
(42:02):
I'm sort of getting, and I don'tknow where this falls and I'll
listen back, but it was like, now I'm getting why you have
this other way of swearing. Yeah.
How do you swear swearing? Substitute roll the the I think
1 was sheeper, also known as ovines.
But I think for me too, I curse almost as like a former protest,
(42:25):
because who the fuck are you to tell me to stop now?
You know, I'm an adult. My wife hates it, would like me
to stop cursing as much. She's like, why did you need to
say that there? And I'm like, 'cause I fucking
can. Yeah, but also there are peer
reviewed studies that show when you drop an F bomb it releases
endogenous morphine. Well fuck, let's do that more.
(42:46):
I need I need it's morphine. Yeah, it's endogenous.
It's like endorphins. They're also called, but it's
endogenous morphine. It actually is a it's self
medicating. It's a pain reliever.
I have to leave like space between.
Is there a drip? Is there like?
How much do I have? Yeah, that's what you're going
to overdose. Yeah.
(43:07):
Yeah. Oh, that is so funny.
I love that you're you're staying with your mom.
See, like she can sing the F, she can sing an opera, she can
do an Aria to the F bomb. But you.
Can Yeah, it was weird. So, well, thanks for sharing
that. Yeah, that's perfect traumedy
and I can't wait. I can't wait to see your
sommelier or however you say it,dish soap thing to keep.
(43:28):
I I feel like that's going to bea 7 minute bit someday.
Yeah, I do need to weave that back in, I think because.
I'm a I'm a fan. Thank you.
A lot of times in rooms you get 3 minutes, you get 4 minutes.
So I I cut it down to the three minutes that.
Right, But when you start, you know, as time goes on, you, you
will be able to do more time. And that I'm just excited for
(43:49):
that day when that gets to grow into its, you know, and it like
I have this easy bake oven material that I've been doing
for years and it keeps changing and morphing.
But it's one of my chunks that Ijust love doing and it changes
and it grows and it's got a lifeof its own.
And it is my trauma of like, youknow, being a tomboy or having a
lazy eye, you know, it's both ofthose things like being
different as a kid. And it's, it's so silly.
(44:12):
Nobody might know like what I'm releasing with it.
I did a really dark joke at a itwas the four open mic, so there
is an audience. Yeah, the Fort is.
Great. And I just started out when I
was four years old, my father was killed in a post office
massacre that killed 10 people. And then I would just break that
(44:33):
seriousness and go, I'm just kidding guys, I'm so sorry.
It was it was 14, it was 14 people that died.
And so I just kind of yo yoed with their emotions and it it
made me laugh really hard, but the audience was kind of like in
shock and. They're yeah, well, but it's so
I think it's a way to have that outside of you, right.
(44:54):
Yeah, They get to experience what you experience a little bit
like, no, I'm kidding. It's for I was even now I'm
listening to it going wait, I kind of looked it up after you
messaged me and I'm like, wait, it was. 1410 people.
Yeah, so there's that. Do you?
Yeah. What's?
I'm trying to remember other bits, but did you do?
My memory is not very good. Do you do more dark?
(45:14):
But you're saying absurdist? Yeah, so trying to think of that
show, I I told everybody it was my first time doing comedy and
that Limmy found me on the street and then I what was the
next bit? I No, I have the one where I
recently lost 20 lbs and then I say I thought having a testicle
(45:35):
removed would be more masculine.So yeah, it's a.
And then I'm so literal I'm coming up to you afterwards.
And I was like, I should just say yes.
Well, obviously I know it's not a 20 LB testicle.
However, I have see, I do talk about the first testicles I saw
(45:55):
as a kid. Like I was, I was doing a, a, I
was an orthopedic tech. And when I was 17 at this
hospital, I was putting up the overhead frame for hospital
beds. And so I, I walked, I knocked on
a door. The door was closed.
I knocked, but then I didn't wait, which is my big mistake.
And I swung this door open and aman was getting out of bed with
(46:15):
his bottom facing the door. So he was kind of pushing
himself off the bed. And apparently he had mumps in
his testicles because they were the size of grapefruit.
And I mean, those were my first testicles.
And the fact that you ever choseto look again after, or were you
just disappointed? I thought they were huge.
(46:37):
What? Is yeah.
What's wrong with your? Yeah, that's the, that's kind of
where I go is where I go now. All testicles are a
disappointment. Yeah, but it what I mean, 'cause
I was like, oh God, I don't think I was supposed to see
that. And I'm back.
Why is he not wearing a gown? No, he had his gown on, but they
open in the back. Oh, yeah.
And so you're, he's getting, youknow, he was just trying to, and
I could see why he needed the trapeze to lift him himself out
(46:59):
of bed because literally he was pushing himself.
He had those 20 LB balls, man. So I'm just, but so that's, but
the premise is fun. I mean, like you're, you're
like, man, these guy. I, I got big, I got big ones.
And then I like had one big one.Now you have one big one.
But it was, I think I was askingyou because my guest who was on
(47:22):
the week before you, I saw you, was Rick Bryan, who has lost a
testicle to cancer. But I mean, he does.
He did jokes about his. But anyway, I don't know where
I'm going with this other than I'm a bit literal sometimes.
Like I want to know, was there really trauma behind it?
I'm a curious person. Like I want to.
(47:44):
Know, I think I ended with a Bill Clinton sock puppet so that
that wasn't very drama based. Do your impression.
So yeah, the bit is basically that I want to sound smart at
parties because everybody thinksI'm I'm the funny guy.
Like I have a 2 minute party setand I say I do, it's a sock
puppet play with a Bill Clinton sock puppet I made and I pull
(48:06):
him out and I say it builds to this line.
It's a whole big thing with smoke machines.
But at the end he says I did nothave socks with that young
intern and his name is Tua Clinton.
I made him in a meeting when I was probably supposed to be
working. You really did.
Yeah, would you? I mean, I'm there, I'm
listening, I'm talking, but I'm also fabric gluing cotton balls.
(48:26):
Into a sock and and did you build that because you had this
good impression and it came to you that the mixing the sex with
socks? I'm just curious.
I love hearing how people come up with bits like, hey, I've got
this Bill Clinton. It's a little dated now.
I think it used to be better, too.
In high school, I remember we were watching a movie in some
(48:48):
history class because that's what you do in history class.
And Bill Clinton was like good afternoon.
And right after he said it, I was like, good afternoon.
And I did it like perfect. And this girl whipped her head
around like I was the devil. And I was like, I'm going to
keep that in my back pocket. I don't have a ton of
impressions, but that one I I'vekept fresh.
(49:09):
But it gives you confidence. It's like, you know, that, you
know, somebody was like, whoa, what is he?
Yeah. And I just, I think I built the
whole bit around just wanting tohave a sock puppet for exactly 5
seconds because I talk about theword digress.
And then after I do that impression, I say, but I digress
and I take the puppet off 3 people after the show were like,
(49:29):
you have to do more with the puppet.
And I'm like. I think it works because I don't
with. The puppet.
Yeah, Yeah. Just this like it is absurd.
Like all of a sudden I like, I see you on stage, you bring a
little backpack and I was like, what's in the backpack?
What's he doing with the backpack?
Yeah. Yeah, Limmy was a little worried
too. He's like, why does he have a
backpack? Why has he not touched the
(49:49):
backpack? For the first six.
Minutes of the set. And I guess it's awkward to keep
a sock puppet in your pocket, right?
Yeah. Well, maybe.
I thought he had that removed. What maybe?
He goes, yeah, somehow. Maybe you could tie it into that
so you could whip that out here.Yeah, I don't know.
I think the first time I did it I was wearing cargo shorts and
the host of the show was like, that's the only acceptable
(50:11):
reason to wear cargo. Shorts.
I was like, I don't want to get blasted for cargo.
Oh, I know we used to be the guythat used to run our new talent
night at comedy works. His his name is Deacon Gray and
he had a thing, you know, just never wear shorts on stage.
But then it's like Sam talent. He wears shorts all the time.
You. Got to give the people what they
(50:31):
want man, you know? That's my.
Pasty, pasty Anglo legs. So, yeah, I mean, it's one of
those things like it we're comedians, like who's we're not
rule follower. That's the whole point.
I am more of a rule follower comedian probably.
I don't know. I never took a class.
I just got into it too soon where I had to just figure it
(50:51):
out and and of course I'd listento comedy and I knew like
intuitively, I knew the rules ofthrees.
I didn't have it intellectually,but you just know the beats
somehow. You just start writing that way.
It's fun to watch. It'll be interesting to have you
back. I like to have people back every
couple years. I'm who knows if I live this
long or stay committed, but I feel it's the thing.
(51:13):
But to see the the growth of comedians is fun.
But what prompted you to start comedy?
How? Because you're now how old?
I am 43. Years old, you're 43.
And so you started comedy in your 40s and what, what led you
to that moment, do you know? I always wanted to do it like
and I just, I don't know why I didn't start earlier.
(51:35):
I kind of am kicking myself now that I'm doing it.
And I feel like, you know, I'm not a spring chicken.
I'm not not old by any means, but I'm not.
I like that you gesture towards me.
It was a it was a gesture of assuredness.
Not I would. No, I.
No, come on, I did that in subliminal.
I am 64 so I am old but I'm about to get Medicare.
(51:58):
I was doing the MC workshop thispast weekend with Janae Burris.
Oh, cool comedy works. And she mentioned you and John
and she said like, you know, everybody thinks that you need
to be young or relate in this kind of a way.
But then she called out both your names and was.
Like the oldest comics in Denver.
She's like they can go into any room and just crush.
(52:19):
But it is fun to be relatable even at this age.
And I, I don't know that I've heard say, like, I know
obviously it doesn't help for you to go.
I wish I had started sooner. I wish I had started or I start
at 27 And my ex-husband was like, don't you think if you're
meant to do this, you would havedone it by now?
And I'm like, well, we get therewhen we get there.
And what got you there is what I'm curious.
(52:40):
About my oldest was just tired of hearing me talk about it and
I had written and said I had a friend kind of chunk it for me
and try to make a type 5 and I ended up not actually performing
that sat at all. When I ended up doing it, I made
it my 2024 goal. I'm going to do this.
And of course, as the chicken shit that I am, I did it in
(53:01):
July, yeah, July of last year. So it was like my goal for the
year. And then I didn't actually go
and do it. The first time I went, I was
just scouting the mic. I wanted to see what the mic was
like. And I didn't just go do it.
I had to like prepare and do reconnaissance mission so.
But did the first time you did it was at Fort Collins, the
comedy Fort? It was not the first time I did
(53:22):
it. I'm a Boston comic, Nancy.
I It was Jamaica Plain, MA. And so I did it right before
leaving. I, I was like, I already scouted
this mic out. I I should just go and actually
do it before leaving town. And then the next week I drove
out here because we were moving my my oldest graduate high
school and we wanted to buy a house.
(53:42):
And that's not very doable in Boston.
So yeah, did a mic, drove out here, and then my second mic I
did was in Fort Collins. It would have been the sliced
pizza one that they have. And then I started doing the
Fort too, and that's a, that's afantastic room, but was just
terrifying. I'd never been in a spotlight.
(54:04):
Comedy in the dark, basically. Yeah, it's different.
Yeah. So that was.
That's a great room to work out in though, because it's a real
room. It's a real audience.
People come to the mic. It's not just other comics.
It's. And now I'm the opposite.
I went to like a podunk last month in Fleming, Colorado, and
(54:24):
there were like 20 people and I could see all their faces.
And like, for the 1st 2 minutes I was just kind of like nervous
about it because I'm used to that real room, yeah.
Yeah, well, what's next for you?What do you what do you just
continue to work on the craft and doing lots of mics and.
Yeah, so this month my wife is going to you're up.
(54:47):
So I have to stay home with the kid.
So I'm I'm probably just going to focus on writing.
But when she gets back, I'm trying to get tape.
I want to do festivals. That's a goal.
Oh yeah. Step.
I want to get to and I know. And that the comedy Fort, you
can get a lot of good video and also downtown comedy works.
Yeah, the mic, they don't have the videographer at the Fort, so
(55:10):
I got to get on like a a show ora showcase at some point to do
that. But I'm trying to get on thick
skin. The comedy works because that's
that's a 4 minute set. Not be able to grab that tape
trying to get I. I found that for festivals you
need social media, which I'm notfantastic at.
But oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, well, you've done
festivals, but you also have a good social media.
(55:31):
How like? Well, when I did those
festivals, I got to say things have changed in this this short
of time. Sure.
So Boston and Seattle were 2018-2019 pre pandemic.
I think during the pandemic things kind of blew up more on
social media. I don't know, I try.
I'm I'm off the algorithm right now.
I don't, I feel like my social media is kind of flatlining
(55:53):
right now, but it's out there ifanybody wants to tune in.
What's your social media? It is at Chris Phillips Comedy
on Instagram and Chris Phillips Comedy YouTube also.
Oh fantastic. Well, let's follow you.
Let's give Chris some love and some likes.
Check him out. I'm looking forward to seeing
more of your comedy. I I really appreciate getting to
(56:15):
know you better and likewise. Yeah, indubitably.
Indubitably, we're going to put that in as often as possible.
All right, well, and you're getting your daughter out of the
dorm today here in CU and I meanthat's amazing.
I loved I loved that you. I mean, really quickly you told
me that beautiful story how you met her through teaching English
(56:35):
as a second language and met hermom and, and then.
I was that teacher I dated. The kids?
No, she came after you right on Facebook later.
Yeah, this is her fault. Yeah, but that was after she
was. Yeah.
OK, You're no you're. I was a good.
Teacher, You're a good teacher and good boundaries.
Yeah. All right.
Well, thanks for coming by today.
(56:56):
Thanks for having me, I'm appreciate it.
I want to thank my guest Chris Phillips.
Follow Chris Phillips on YouTubeand Instagram at Chris Phillips
Comedy and you can follow me at nancynorton.tv.
And thank you for being a listener, for witnessing and
being part of this Co healing journey.
(57:17):
I want to thank my son NathanielNorton for helping create this
music loop for traumedy. And we do our best to upload an
episode every Tuesday. It's traumedy Tuesdays.
Remember, no matter what, keep laughing.
You're listening to Traumedy, the podcast that helps you take
your pain and play with it. I'm Nancy Norton.
I'm a comedian, used to work as a registered nurse, and now I'm
a keynote speaker about the power of humor and I still
travel as a comedian. I'll be out there with Moms
Unhinged in Madison, WI in Waterloo June 18th and 19th.
(00:27):
Oh, got a local thing here. June 6th in the Denver area.
Denver Tonight talk show with Jacob Rupp and Miriam Moreno and
then I'll be out at the Comedy Factory in Branson, MO.
Go to my website nancynorton.tv.Click on upcoming shows.
It should show you my link tree with all those shows.
(00:48):
Anyway, love to see you out there.
This week we have a wonderful new comedian on the scene who
opened up to me about a trauma 'cause I talk about trauma DA
lot and I want to take this live.
I want to start doing Trauma D live where we will take your
pain and help you play with it. This episode deals with gun
(01:09):
violence, mass shooting, and a lot of humor on top of it.
Like your style of story. Like the kicking the gun out
makes perfect sense. Like I'm sure you would love to
be the hero that goes in and interrupts this massacre.
Yeah. And I lived in Columbia for a
year. And I always had this idea of,
like, if somebody did come, I would just, like, beat him in
(01:32):
the face and be this amazing person.
And when I was living in Columbia for a year, I went to
this Frito shop where you get fried foods.
At the time, might have been like 30-4 cents, like that's how
much it cost. So I have my mil peso coin.
I'm practicing my sentence queeron a carabagnola de queso port 5
(01:53):
or. And as I I'm in my world
practicing my sentence, a man with a revolver pulled it out
and just emptied it behind the counter.
And I'm in flip flops and shortsrunning like a little bitch.
Like I'm like, I did not walk through Texas Ranger.
I like, yeah. I love your fight flight freeze
(02:14):
kicked in. You flip-flopped out of there.
I did indeed. I bet you're you made the sounds
too that the flip flop. Oh yeah, yeah, that'd be.
AI think the first sound was and.
It is traumedy, it is taking some of the pain out of it,
lightening it up, raising the frequency, but just want you to
(02:35):
know what the subject matter is.Deals with gun violence and a
mass shooting. And let me know.
Let me know if you have feedback.
You need something and enjoy this episode and I'll see you on
the other side. Welcome to Traumedy.
My guest this week is a writer, a comedian and someone I'm just
(03:01):
now getting to know. Welcome Chris Phillips,
everybody. Thank you for having me,
appreciate it. I always do the clapping.
I'll clap too, it'll sound like.We're in a full room.
Thanks for coming over on a rainy What is this when, what is
it? Wednesday.
A rainy Wednesday in Boulder andwe worked at a gig up in Conifer
Co. And you're from Fort Collins, is
(03:22):
that? I do live in Fort Collins now.
Yeah, I from Kansas. I moved from Boston about a year
ago and then I lived there like 6 years.
Really. I didn't know you were a a
Bostonian for a while. Bostonian adjacent.
I don't know if you know where Brookline is.
It's kind of out by Fenway and on the West and like, it's the,
(03:44):
it's the smarmy suburb of like, academia.
Or you bus in you bus into Cambridge.
No, 'cause actually everybody tries to get into that school
district out there. So people were busing to where I
lived. OK, I, you know, and I, this is
a great opportunity for me to remind folks that I won the
(04:05):
Boston Comedy Festival in 2018. I mean, it was a miracle.
No, seriously. It was kind of 'cause I was
like, you know, the first femaleto win it, but then also 58
years old and this really young handsome dude was playing this
guitar song that was so funny and so lovable but I can't
(04:28):
explain it. There was like 3 rows of these
MIT people and I closed with thePi sexual joke and I was like I
win. Did you shout out I win at the
end of your set? Because that's, that's a power
move, Nancy. First of all.
That's a great like, I don't even know the joke, but I know
that the joke was great. I have sex every 3.14159 years.
(04:53):
Nice. And I, where's my bisexuals?
We're going to March out here onsummer, you know, Somerville
Square or wherever we were. And I'm like, we're going to
March in a big circle, divide ourselves by our diameter.
You know, it was a really fun MIT guys like I whatever I was
like the higher power just handed me that victory, right?
Yeah. But anyway, thank you for
(05:14):
letting me reminisce. I'll probably cut that part out.
I do edit it. So if there's anything you want
to back up and say it differently, make.
Me sound smart and post if you want me just to say indubitably
a couple times you put that in in response to something you say
I'm I can use all the help I canget got it.
You got to teach me. I want to win a competition.
In a festival like that. So.
(05:34):
OK, you do. You want to.
Yeah. I mean, it is a weird thing.
Festivals are weird. It's weird when art gets
competitive. Yeah.
And at. The same time I want to win and
be a champion, I want I want a ribbon and a certificate of
participation in. My heart what I just to add so I
can be very humbled by that. I I wanted to do a late night
(05:57):
talk show since I was four yearsold and I had never done one
here. I was 58.
And I'm like, oh, I'm going to go practice doing 4 1/2 to 5
minutes under pressure and see if I could, you know, get a set
that I could send to The TonightShow.
And then the Colbert talent coordinator was supposed to be
one of the judges. And I was like, Oh my gosh, if I
(06:19):
could get on Colbert before I die, this would be amazing.
And the finals came and she did not show up.
And I've still not done a late night talk show, probably never
will. So there you go.
There's the balance of life. What does it mean?
It was just an idea from when I was a kid and.
Did you watch all the late showsgrowing up?
What drew you to that as your? Dream yeah, as a kid and my dad
(06:40):
liked to laugh so I think that made me think that's where you
get your value is if I can make people laugh.
And my father had trauma and we're going to talk about if.
I don't know if we want to jump right in, but as I said that I
felt my heart hurt a little bit because I had a dad growing up
and his dad died in an explosionwhen he was 7.
(07:03):
And so my dad grew up with that and his sister was also in the
explosion. So he lost his sister and his
dad when he was 7. And I know it changed him, but
I, I know this about my dad. He just, his handle on the CB
radio was happy hour. He wasn't really an alcoholic,
but he did have happy hour everyday.
(07:23):
And he's like, let's just be happy, you know?
And I was curious. So you messaged me and, you
know, about traumedy and we did the comedy together and you
messaged me and said that you lost your dad.
What happened? Yeah, so when I was 4, my dad
was an Air Force guy, did 23 years and then retired.
(07:44):
And then back in the day you could stack pensions.
So went to work for the post office and that was the 80s.
So he worked at the Edmond post office and in 1986, fourteen
people were shot and killed. And then the gunman shot himself
also. And it was kind of a thing where
(08:07):
the culture of the post office was like a cool corporation.
They pushed people and got maximum efficiency and like the
the upper management was the cool kids club and they just
ripped this guy apart. The shooter.
Yeah, the shooter was Patrick Cheryl.
(08:28):
And he was just, it was like a glass room.
Everybody could see it. They just basically verbally
beat him down. And he came in one or two days
later. He told somebody.
He called them and said, hey, don't go to work tomorrow.
They had no idea what was going on.
It wasn't a common enough thing to be a red flag at the time,
but anyway. So he was in the break room.
(08:51):
I just want to clarify that yourdad was like hanging out in the
break room and and it's interesting that you lead with
the compassion for the shooter. Has that brought you some sort
of like healing to have forgiveness or something like
that? Honestly not really.
I like it. Just helped, I think as I've
grown up a bit because when you're 4, you hear a bad guy
(09:13):
went and killed your dad. And then it's like, you know, I
didn't know my dad. So it was kind of this, he's the
good guy. I don't have any context for him
being a human with flaws, that kind of a thing.
And then the other guy is it's almost like a a comic book.
You have a very two-dimensional good guy and a very
two-dimensional bad guy. And then since it was such a
(09:34):
public murder, there been shows there been research into it.
So I have more of that context of this was a guy.
And while I can't condone his actions or say, man, I would
forgive him and have a beer withhim if he were still alive,
right? At the same time, I have to
understand it from a human context that there were things
(09:55):
that led to this. It wasn't just one guy who
snapped in an isolated event. It was, you know, failings of
society, that kind of a thing. So that's kind of as I'm mature,
I try to think of it from the holistic lens, not just that,
you know, four years old. Comic book that's a great
analogy. I really appreciate you sharing
(10:16):
that. I know I'm I've been trying to
work on getting what I call the eagle eye view of things and
getting but I don't know in my recovery work too.
Sometimes they'll, they'll say, Oh well, I'm dissociating 'cause
sometimes it helps me get out ofmy one perspective of things and
I I, I'm just curious. So you said you didn't know your
(10:38):
dad at 4:00, but you just mean 'cause you were only four?
Or did he? Live.
He lived. No, I, I, I'm I knew him.
I had a relationship with him asany 4 year old would.
But you, you don't remember muchfrom from being four.
I have some glimpses, but I don't have a concrete
personality I can assign to thatperson.
Did you work hard as you grew upor did your mom help you to know
(11:01):
him better or or was it not allowed to talk about like in my
family, those kind of things, wejust shut, we bottle that down
and don't talk about it. Yeah, my mom was very broken
after everything, so it like I couldn't play with guns in the
house. Like even if they were toys.
I if we talked about Dad, excuseme, there would be at least like
(11:26):
1020 minutes of her crying. So, you know, it was just you,
you avoided it. She'd bring it up sometimes
because she was trying to do that, letting us know or
remember and work through grief.We all went to counseling paid
for by the post office. So, you know, she was trying to
make some of those active, taking initiative on that.
(11:48):
But at the same time, yeah, you don't, you don't bring that up,
but because you don't want to. You don't want to hear that.
And that hearing her cry is triggering too, because you you
relate that to the funeral and the service kind of stuff too.
Well, I mean, and do you have siblings?
I have a brother. I don't talk to my family very
(12:08):
much anymore. There's for about a year.
Kind of had a falling out. He lives in Missouri.
He's about four years older thanme, but after everything, I grew
up kind of in fear of him because he was going through
trauma. So he didn't, he didn't take
anything off me. He would like, you know, he'd
punch me sometimes, hold me to the ground to kind of in a
(12:30):
dominant. I don't know how to describe it
because it was weird, but but yeah, yeah.
But just but like maybe that washis his his reactive trauma was
to dominate you and like take out his anger and rage on you
for. Sure, yeah.
Whoa, man, that's a lot. Yeah, and I, you know, I just
(12:51):
kind of under it was my normal. It was like these people are
going through this same thing I'm going through.
So even though I was angry, I didn't particularly like it.
That's that's my brother and yougot.
Such a nice disposition over here.
You know, I didn't particularly like it.
Yeah, on second thought, let's not do that.
(13:11):
No, honestly, being able to talkabout it all was the result of a
lot of therapy. So it's not like I just, I was
like, hey, you should stop doingthat.
I'm an evolved person. Like there was a lot of of rope
between here and there for sure.I was going to say cuz that is a
long childhood. Yeah.
(13:32):
Of dealing with that. Yeah.
Like there's a there's a I don'twant.
I was just trying to think of the right word.
There's an, you know, an abuser in your home.
Four years is significant. I have a sister who's five years
older and in my mind, she felt like kind of like an adult
almost because she was enough older.
At what point I mean, did you notice you started using maybe
humor to help you or did you just?
(13:55):
You know, as I get older too, I think, what would I be like
without the trauma? Like, would I still be a happy,
humorous guy? And now I have a daughter who's
7. She's my exact copy and like
it's weird because my wife is Colombian, very brown person and
I have the whitest with a capital WH child who looks
exactly like me. My mom used to say I hope
(14:17):
someday you have a kid just likeyou and she she is apparently a
voodoo witch and did a very goodjob on that hex.
But. Like and she's I bet amazing.
Yeah, she doesn't have all my pre loaded drama and like years
of patterned abuse. So I'm seeing her and she laughs
at everything. She talks to herself, tell
(14:38):
stories and I'm like, oh, I probably would have been like
this anyway, but I it was an escape for me.
I grew up watching Comedy Central.
I don't watch the late shows very much, but like reruns of
Saturday Night Live. Big huge Bobcat Goldthwaite fan.
Felt like those guys kind of, you know, like raised me so.
(15:00):
So they they were like your friends.
They were like your Oasis in thein the storm of all this other
stuff for. Sure, yeah.
Bobcat. Yeah, Interesting.
I. Love the the thing he did with
his voice in between jokes or. He was very.
Unique. And then he'd just throw a
haymaker of a good joke out there and it'd be like, yeah.
(15:21):
He was one of the most unique. Or is, I guess still right,
Still is one of the most unique voices in comedy.
With that, does he still do the thing?
I haven't seen him in a while. He does.
It's like if you go see him live.
I saw him in Omaha once. It's less pronounced than than
when he was doing it in like police Academy, but he he still
(15:41):
does it from time to time. I can see why a kid would like
that too. If you're dealing with all this
stuff, like underneath, like it's a, it's like a, you know,
like I'm doing funny stuff, but it's like I'm barely holding it
together. And I, I kind of get how that
could, you know, vibe. You could vibe with that like
this kind of like, I'm going to lose it if I don't like do
something. And he's delivering these
(16:02):
sarcastic lines. Like, to me, Kinison was too
much. He's just like, rage.
Here's a stream of rage, just constant.
Yeah, like Bobcat was like a stream of snark on with with a
little bit of rage bubbling under there, but it never just
flowed. So.
So you get a little, yeah, you get a little break from it, kind
of. Yeah.
I could see what you're saying, yeah.
Because Kinison was more like a fire hydrant of just.
(16:27):
Yeah, Well, interesting that youfound those guys so early.
And how about at school and stuff for friends?
And did you or did you do a lot of make sounds like you're
highly creative. You're a writer.
Did you do a lot of kind of makebelieve stuff or fantasy stuff
as a kid? For sure.
And some of it was comedy and some of it was me, like, you
(16:49):
know, Walker, Texas Ranger, likekicking the gun out of
somebody's hand and like solvingall my my problems that way.
But yeah, I always just kind of fell back into my thoughts.
And again, I've always had to question, is that just me or is
that me reacting to trauma? And I, I think in a large part
it is me, but I also use that with my trauma.
(17:12):
A lot of just I'm going to go over here and think about this
thing. Like your style of story, like
the kicking the gun out makes perfect sense.
Like I'm sure you would love to be the hero that goes in and
interrupts this massacre. Yeah.
And I lived in Columbia for a year, and I always had this idea
of like, if somebody did come, Iwould just, like, beat him in
(17:32):
the face and be this amazing person.
And when I was living in Columbia for a year, I went to
this Frito shop where you get fried foods.
And I was like, you know what, I'm gonna go, It's 7:00 is dark,
but I'm gonna get myself Caravanola.
It's this little cheese potato mashed thing.
Oh, it sounds. Good.
(17:53):
It very much is. Cheese is and crispy.
Is it fried? Yeah, straw fried.
It's salt cheese and it's. Yeah, yeah.
My weakness. Yeah.
And it fat and salt and crispy. At the time might have been like
30-4 cents like that's how much it cost.
So I have my mil peso coin. I'm practicing my sentence
Corona Cara manuela de queso porta 5 or and as I I'm in my
(18:16):
world practicing my sentence, a man with a revolver pulled it
out and just emptied it behind the counter and I'm in flip
flops and shorts running like a little bitch.
Like I'm like, I did not walk through Texas Ranger.
I like, yeah. I love your fight flight freeze
kicked in. You flip-flopped out of there.
I did. Indeed, I bet you're you made
(18:39):
the sounds too though. The flip flop.
Oh yeah, yeah, that'd be. AI think the first sound was and
then it. Was that was out of your anus?
Yeah, yeah, both ends, ears and nostrils, all of it at once.
So yeah, it was because my culture of, of being an American
(19:00):
with random gun violence is thatif somebody comes and starts
shooting, they're shooting at everybody.
And everybody in Colombia is like, well, at least you are
safe. And I'm like, what do you mean
you didn't know that guy? Money.
And it's like, oh, you don't actually have the same worries
here I am. You worry about getting robbed
or owing someone money. Or being, you know, a a hostage,
(19:22):
I guess, kidnapped for a ransom.Yeah, I know.
That's not uncommon in some of the South American countries.
I don't know if Colombia, I think.
Is that that was the the one where it was famed?
But generally that would have been like tourists.
So, you know, so the locals. Not someone in the flip flop
like you gotta look like you gotmoney.
Yeah, but still, the fact that you're saying it's different
(19:44):
because there's not random acts of violence.
There's specific reasons they'recoming after you.
You were fine because you didn'towe him money.
Yeah, I didn't know that at the time.
I ran like a bitch and I I got like back to the apartment.
I hung a sheet over the window. I was I watched too many movies,
Nancy. And I was worried that they were
(20:05):
going to be like the gringo saw what happened and then they
would have to like silence the witness and my wife's like,
sweetheart, the the police aren't coming to ask you any
questions. They don't.
They said they're going to investigate the bruises.
There were there were 12 people who watched what happened.
No, no one's coming for you. And I'm like.
OK. It took, yeah, it took a while
for you to believe that? Probably, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Well, also just, I mean React, I
(20:27):
mean that's got to retrigger. Oh yeah.
I was thinking, oh, I'm going toleave Gabby and and Audrey
alone, just like I Yeah, yeah. Wow.
Yeah. Well, I like when fight flight
freeze takes over. You know, I'm a, I'm a big fan.
I'm a big fan of your intuition like or that immediate midbrain
it and it acts so much faster than your frontal lobe.
(20:48):
I suppose if you were in the military or had rehearsed and
rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed, maybe you can
override the midbrain. But like my dad survived that
explosion because he had rehearsed it in his mind that if
there was ever an explosion at the train track where they
offloaded this gasoline, he would book it down the tracks.
And he did. He turned and.
(21:09):
And he lived. And you lived.
I mean, who knows? Had you stayed there?
We don't know. Yeah, but so.
But it. It's but I can't outrun the gun,
Nancy. I'm pretty sure he just chose
not to shoot me. I don't know, I mean, I used to
have a long distance runner so I, I always would tour around
and I would run every town and alot of times I would think where
(21:29):
am I? I don't even 'cause you know,
you run long distance, sometimesyou end up I, I got lost a few
times on mountain bikes and stuff.
But I did read in Runners magazine to always run if
somebody pulls a gun because thepeople aren't as good at
shooting it as they think. For sure.
I mean, you don't have to do theSerpentine thing, but just book
it, yeah. 'Cause I didn't do a Serpentine
thing, didn't do it, didn't do that many law girls.
(21:51):
No, I ran around a corner and then I saw a couple walking and
I was trying to remember the word for gun.
And I start yelling arma, arma. And they look at me like, bro, I
don't know this guy money, you know, they, they understood they
weren't in danger, but they're. They're like people in Kansas
when there's a tornado warning, right?
And they just kind of shrug, like, yeah, well, you know, they
don't go in the basement. They've there's so many tornado
(22:13):
warnings. Maybe Kansas and I'm the only
one. I would be like, OK, I hear this
siren and everyone else is like,let's look at it from behind
glass. I'm like, that's not how wind
works. Good.
That's not how wind works indubitably well, I I really
(22:35):
appreciate you. I mean sharing this because wow.
I mean also I was thinking that term going postal is not cute to
you. You know, like how people throw
stuff around and. I've heard it a few times.
Yeah, 2000 and it's like, no, that if, if you really, you
(22:57):
know, felt that there's so many things in our culture like that,
I guess that's part of, I mean, that's just part of being in
this culture, you know. But does it like, how do you
ever, what do you do? Just kind of like, grin and bear
it I guess. Yeah, I used to.
So like I said, to get to where I am now, it took a long, long
road of therapy and thinking about it.
(23:18):
And I, I used to, I remember when I was 30 and I was going
through a divorce, I was marriedbefore and I went and got some
therapy and some help. And the therapist in my first
session was like, hey, you haven't talked about your
parents at all. And so what's going on with
that? And I brought up the thing and I
(23:38):
just factually said what had happened.
And he goes, OK, thanks for sharing that with me.
I want you to look at your fist right now.
I had no idea it was clenched. I was red in the face.
And so he's like, you need to dosomething called EMDR.
I don't know if you're familiar with it, but there's like a
light box and beeping noises andyou just kind of walk through
(23:59):
your trauma. You have a safe space that you
go to and he puts you there and says, Hey, go to your safe space
for a minute. I want you to know that you are.
That's not your fault. That's something.
And it sounds really simple. It's weird with the lights and
the the sounds. And then all of a sudden I can
talk about it and not like, curlup in a ball and freak out.
(24:19):
So it works. EMDR.
Are you familiar with Adam CatonHolland?
He's a local comedian and he came on the podcast.
He was he also, I've done EMDR and it's it's it's amazing what
happens. Like you said, it feels so
oversimplified, but somehow whenyou're listening to music that
(24:40):
crosses like from one side to the other or buzzers in your
hands, it crosses midline in your brain.
And then somehow while processing a trauma, you cannot
because we kind of wall those things off so we can't access
them cognitively. But when we do the combined with
the crossing midline activity, somehow we can integrate that
(25:02):
and not be taken over by it. There's no arguing with the
results. It just changed how I relate to
the trauma. And I I heard someone kind of
say that it's like taking the, like if you were to get a
gunshot wound, it's like taking the lead out and letting you,
you're still going to have scar tissue.
It's still like an injury that you have to heal from and might
(25:26):
impact you, but it's not still hurting and still, yeah, yeah.
And just burning and hurting and.
Causing very much was and so back to your question about like
when people bring it up or insensitive.
When Sandy Hook happened, I was a teacher, I taught English as a
second language and I was teaching 1st and 2nd grade
graders at that time. And in the teacher lounge, the
(25:49):
teacher came in and was just bawling about it just going on
and on. And I, you know, those kinds of
things happening in the fact that we've done nothing about
gun violence in the country for nearly 40 years since my father
was killed. You know, I couldn't add her
trauma to what I was feeling. So I just kind of looked at her
(26:11):
and was very straight and plain face and she looked at me and
thought I was judging her and was like, and then that night I,
I put out a like Facebook post. It was like, it's weird reading
about mass shootings and seeing your father's mass shooting is
one of the top ten in the country on on like a list.
And she saw me the next day. I was like, I'm so sorry.
(26:31):
I had no idea. You were like, I thought you
were just upset. I was upset.
And I'm like, no, I just don't know how to, like, take in other
people's emotions, mostly because, you know, if my mom
thinks about what happened, it'sjust tears and crying.
Yeah, so I OK, EMDR stands for Eye movement Desensitization and
(26:51):
reprocessing. I just needed to say that.
I don't know why. It's just amazing how these
things can can work if especially my son had a trauma
out here, got choked by a guy onthe streets in Boulder and I got
him into trauma therapy. She said the sooner the better.
So I just want to tell folks, I mean, your yours was many years,
but sometimes they can clear a trauma like that, integrate it
(27:15):
in one session. But if it's been years, then it
takes longer. Yeah, it honestly, I, I think I
went three or four times it, it was that impactful and that
quick that I just needed to. And, and that was one thing.
When I was 30 and went back to therapy, I was filling out an
intake form and it said were youabused?
(27:37):
And I was about to mark a no. And then I was like, wait a
second. I think my like, and I, I
mentioned my brother, but my momalso like made me drink liquid
dish soap would hit me. So there was a lot of just, you
know, they were. And the therapist also said
because I was like, well, you know, they were processing their
pain too. And the guys like, you know, I
(27:58):
don't, I don't think you wouldn't have.
I think you would have been abused at some point even if
this would never happen. And I was like, I don't know
that I agree to disagree. And now that you know, it's time
has passed, kind of want to be like, Sir, you're probably, I
apologize for giving me that look when you said that.
Well, but yeah, I mean, the point is it did happen and it
(28:21):
did, but it does add to it. I can say on my like the reason
I started trauma therapy is because of feeling reactive with
my son when he was just a littleguy and things would set me off
over the top. One time I had my fist drawn
back like that and I was like, what is wrong with me?
What is wrong with me? And so I was like, I got to find
(28:43):
a trauma therapist and this is where my spiritual woo woo thing
will come in. My friend Brian, who I've known
I had known for almost 2 decades, I was telling him I got
to find a trauma therapist and we were walking around Boulder
and he said, oh, my, my husband's college best friend or
something. It was a is a psychologist here
in Boulder and does trauma therapy.
(29:04):
And I swear to that moment, Melanie Young walked around the
corner. She came out of a store, called
into the wind. And he goes, wait, there's
Melanie right here. So I'm going to give a shout out
to Melanie Young, amazing traumatherapist who helped me with
EMD, not EMDR, but I said I asked her if she did EMDR
because I'd heard that's what I need.
(29:24):
And she said actually I do something even more efficient,
which is called brain spotting. But I don't know, we don't have
to compare EMDR and brain spotting.
All I know is it was amazingly helpful to me.
And then my next therapist took it to the next level with
psychedelic trauma therapy. So, but I, I think it's
sometimes easier to treat like an incident like that versus you
(29:47):
also had this other trauma as either an outcropping of it or
maybe it exacerbated their behaviour.
I would think so. Yeah, So anyway, that's why when
he said that, I was like, I can't because it almost just
made it sound like. And I think I got defensive
because I was like, well, my father was like killed in the
(30:08):
post office. I think that's going to have an
impact on something I you. Know the odds are pretty good.
That at that at some point, and the thing that is hard to
explain to people is, is not just the incident like in on in
August in 1986 when he died. It's like the people trying to
(30:30):
recover being broken after that.That is actually the trauma more
than because I, I don't remembermy dad dying.
I barely remember the funerals. You know, I, I kind of remember
mom telling us, but I don't, that's not what triggers me.
It's thinking about, you know, how they acted towards me and
took things out, not feeling safe as a kid, those kinds of
(30:53):
things. Not feeling safe.
So when you did you get out of the house as soon as possible
when you turned 18 or 17? I'm just curious.
My dad did. My dad got out of his house at
17. Join the Merchant Marines to get
out of the house. You know, and it's weird because
I didn't, I did, I did go to college and I went about 3 hours
(31:13):
away. I went to a small liberal arts
Christian School in the middle of Kansas.
But I would come home and I would be home sick.
Even though home was weird and broken growing up, but it was,
it was still home. It was where I remembered, you
know things. And I, I think too now that I've
kind of had a falling out with my family and I don't talk to my
brother or my mom anymore. It's like my wife would be like,
(31:36):
do you miss them? Do you feel?
How do you feel about it? And I'll just be like, I feel
bad because I should have a relationship with my mom or my
brother, and I can't because of how we relate to each other.
It's not healthy. But I feel sad that I don't have
that. And you know, her family is
fantastic. They have problems like any
(31:57):
other family. But like, you know, she talks to
her brother and their friends and the parents, you know, call
every every week, every other week.
I was like, you know, I, I, I want that idea of having a
family that that would feel normal, feel nice.
And I, so I think I was chasing that.
So I didn't just haul out of there.
(32:20):
My brother kind of did. He went to college, he came home
1 summer and then never again. And so I yeah, I probably should
have, probably would have been better in the long run just
because my mom still hasn't recovered.
But at that point, and I understand this too, that it's a
process of even recognizing and she had no distance from it.
(32:42):
And that's what's familiar. And that was home.
And, and I, I so relate to this kind of estrangement and I have
not cut anybody out, but I'm trying to have better
boundaries. And I know it's just so painful
like to let go of that. Like we were talking about
(33:03):
earlier, I was just like, man, that to have that kind of like
sister or brother who you feel is in your corner and you relate
to and you're you want to help each other.
I don't know, I just I've. Seen enough movies that I know
that that's what it is supposed to be.
And I see it and I'm like, oh, that.
That would be cool. Yeah.
And we would call each other on birthdays and it would just be
(33:26):
kind of quiet. Well, how about this?
Oh, yeah, this is good. And there just wasn't a
conversation wasn't a relationship.
And so when, you know, when we had our falling out, our
argument, it was just really easy to leave behind because I
never had that. Like I listened to my wife and
her brother talk and I don't understand the word of it
(33:47):
because it's in Spanish, but it's it's very like so loving
and you can. Feel it in your.
Heart, I'm like, what in the world is happening?
Yeah, I'm so glad that you got trauma therapy as a parent,
because it does. It makes us better parents, you
know, when we are able to be fully present and have that
heart access with your kids. And I'm sure that's been, I
(34:10):
think having kids has been really well, I only have one,
but it's been so healing for me to like give my son the things I
wanted. And probably I've
overcompensated I think a littlebit like sometimes I feel like I
should have. I don't know what I was going to
say, like I'm not as good at always holding him accountable
sometimes, but I wonder if that helped you too to finally go
(34:34):
wait, this is I can now see a healthy parent child
relationship. I mean, you met your wife, your
your you call her a stepdaughter.
She's but she's your daughter. She's, yeah, she's my kid and
she calls me father, which is weird because that's like the
biological term. But I'm not going to argue with
her so. And you know that that road took
(34:55):
some time too. She turned 15 and I was parental
unit #2. There's that phase.
And I got the trauma therapy before that relationship and all
that, those kinds of things. So did set it up nicely for me
to be able to. I'm still a mess, you know?
I still air, but I'm not like I can talk about it or I can
(35:19):
process it in a way where I'm not just spitting poison at
everybody all at once. Yeah, well, I I was remembering.
So we did a comedy together. When did so you just started
stand up like a year ago? Yeah, and that's, gosh, so.
And you're already like, I was feeling this when I was watching
like, wow, you're so comfortableon stage and you had a great
(35:42):
set. And I was just like, wow, when I
was a year in, man, I had cottonmouth.
My, you know, lips were stuck tomy teeth and stuff.
So that's cool that you're. Even after I'm like shaking from
adrenaline, but like during I just know that it's going to go
better if I just push through. And I'm, I think this is semi
(36:03):
trauma based too. I just practice.
I practiced for at least two hours that day.
I practice like, you know, half hour, hour every day on on some
piece of material. So when I get up there, it's
just putting out what I'm I'm really ready for because I'm
terrified. And so that you can do it by
rote. Yeah.
(36:23):
Because it is like, I know when I get on stage, I can go like, I
have ideas. I want to do this new bit.
And then I'm like, I forgot thatnew bit.
Yeah, no, I get aggravated. My, my new bit is like I've,
I've spent at least an hour saying the new bit.
So I'm never too worried about anew bit.
(36:44):
Sometimes, you know, at an open mic, it's not as high stakes and
I'll try something out, whether it be trauma based or not.
Some of it is, some of it isn't.I try to air towards absurdity
because that's kind of, I don't know, an escape.
I've always liked those kinds ofcomedians, like the amazing
(37:04):
Jonathan or Who's Mark Forward or somebody working now.
I don't know, I gotta watch these guys.
I don't watch enough comedy. If I need a mental health boost
or something, I watch Maria Bamford or Yeah.
Mark Forward is my guy for that and.
I gotta check him out. Yeah, for sure.
And he's like semi relatable butmore absurd.
(37:25):
And I try to do that. I've done some trauma based
comedy, but it doesn't, it makesme laugh.
But it, you know, it's hard because not everybody wants to
hear your trauma. They're at a comedy show, they
want to laugh, they want to do relatable stuff.
But when I start doing Traumedy as a show, I want to find
comedians like you who might be able to help, because that's
(37:46):
what I want to do is help peoplelike maybe audience members come
in and have a trauma they want to release.
I mean, it, it's a hot, it's a tall order, but it's like, but
we could help them cartoon theirpain a little bit or make it
absurd. Like give it that cartoony
aspect where it's so silly. It takes the the whimsy takes
the pain out of it. Yeah, I have a relatable bit
(38:08):
about cursing as a parent and how I don't want to curse so I
just go fire hydrogens of APSI of £20 per square inch and I
roll. That phone.
Into a fact as relatable. Everybody's been in a situation
where they want to curse. Can't.
Yeah, but need to. And I, I added to that and I had
(38:28):
about my mom making me drink dish soap every time I cursed
and how I was, you know, it was abusive.
But at the same time, I became the world's most foremost.
Just so Somalia I don't. Know.
How to pronounce that but indubitably make me sound?
Smart. Indubitably.
But it it was a really good bit in my opinion.
(38:50):
And then somebody else was like,yeah, you could work on that.
And I was like, you just, yeah, that's not relatable.
So. I think it's very relatable.
I like the whole concept of it, and I think it would be fun to
keep dragging it out and going. Let me tell you about, you know,
Dawn versus. Yeah.
What? What's another dish?
Is this Dawn? Did you bring this from a
(39:11):
Walmart? Get this away from me?
Cleanse my palate. What would.
Yeah. What would you use to cleanse
your palate between dish soap? You know, that's always the
challenge. Popcorn.
I know they use popcorn. Yeah, I was like, this is this
is Palmolive. I detect notes of lemon zest.
Yeah, yeah, I think it's fun. I mean, and you could present it
(39:32):
on the whatever you've got the little like this.
I always like thinking in cartoon like sketch kind of.
I love doing like that's what I do like doing.
I would say like bring it up andthen kind of act it out.
I think people love that, yeah. I'll I love it.
I did it one time at a mic and somebody told me that that was
the the weak ish part of the bit.
(39:53):
Oh, someone person, yeah, got to, got to be careful about
listening to people. Right.
You really do you. Have to you just and eventually
you listen more and more to yourself and the audience.
You know, I always say test material on larger groups, and
it's hard at Mike's too, becausewhen you're at Mike's you're
playing to other comics and it'sa totally different.
(40:15):
Like you, you present different material to comics than you do
to general audiences, I feel. I mean, they can both play, but
do you know what I'm saying? I do feel like this dish soap
thing is going to be perfect trauma T for you because it's
going to express it. But also, like, you know what?
How did she make you drink the soap?
(40:36):
Whatever you're just saying. Yeah.
So basically what would happen is anytime I cursed, she would
tell me, or, you know, at one point she told me when I cursed
when I was your age, I had to have a bar of soap.
They put a bar of soap in my mouth and she didn't have a bar
of soap. I don't know where we got to
liquid dish soap, but she would grab that and then just pour it
(40:57):
my mouth. I'd try to keep it closed.
She'd pinch it open and pour some of that in there.
So what ended up happening? My brother would be holding me
down or be hitting me, and she would come home and I would say,
this is what happened to me. And he would say, well, he
called me a fucking Dick head. And I'm like, yeah, you fucking
Dick head. Of course I did.
(41:17):
You're old. You were holding me down, that's
why I called you that. So and then she was like just
didn't tolerate cursing, which was also hilarious because she
like she would lose her keys anddo like 5 minutes of just like
she would sing the F word. It'd be like fuck, fuck, fuck,
fuck, fuck. She'd be hitting high notes like
Mariah Carey doing a crazy special.
(41:39):
And just so there was like, no, the the hypocrisy was just off
the charts, but I would get the dish soap.
So that's that's where that yeahcame from.
Yeah, He gets no punishment for causing you physical harm.
Sure. Yeah, but you.
But that is where the bound. That's where.
Oh, this is this is important that you were swearing and now
(42:02):
I'm sort of getting, and I don'tknow where this falls and I'll
listen back, but it was like, now I'm getting why you have
this other way of swearing. Yeah.
How do you swear swearing? Substitute roll the the I think
1 was sheeper, also known as ovines.
But I think for me too, I curse almost as like a former protest,
(42:25):
because who the fuck are you to tell me to stop now?
You know, I'm an adult. My wife hates it, would like me
to stop cursing as much. She's like, why did you need to
say that there? And I'm like, 'cause I fucking
can. Yeah, but also there are peer
reviewed studies that show when you drop an F bomb it releases
endogenous morphine. Well fuck, let's do that more.
(42:46):
I need I need it's morphine. Yeah, it's endogenous.
It's like endorphins. They're also called, but it's
endogenous morphine. It actually is a it's self
medicating. It's a pain reliever.
I have to leave like space between.
Is there a drip? Is there like?
How much do I have? Yeah, that's what you're going
to overdose. Yeah.
(43:07):
Yeah. Oh, that is so funny.
I love that you're you're staying with your mom.
See, like she can sing the F, she can sing an opera, she can
do an Aria to the F bomb. But you.
Can Yeah, it was weird. So, well, thanks for sharing
that. Yeah, that's perfect traumedy
and I can't wait. I can't wait to see your
sommelier or however you say it,dish soap thing to keep.
(43:28):
I I feel like that's going to bea 7 minute bit someday.
Yeah, I do need to weave that back in, I think because.
I'm a I'm a fan. Thank you.
A lot of times in rooms you get 3 minutes, you get 4 minutes.
So I I cut it down to the three minutes that.
Right, But when you start, you know, as time goes on, you, you
will be able to do more time. And that I'm just excited for
(43:49):
that day when that gets to grow into its, you know, and it like
I have this easy bake oven material that I've been doing
for years and it keeps changing and morphing.
But it's one of my chunks that Ijust love doing and it changes
and it grows and it's got a lifeof its own.
And it is my trauma of like, youknow, being a tomboy or having a
lazy eye, you know, it's both ofthose things like being
different as a kid. And it's, it's so silly.
(44:12):
Nobody might know like what I'm releasing with it.
I did a really dark joke at a itwas the four open mic, so there
is an audience. Yeah, the Fort is.
Great. And I just started out when I
was four years old, my father was killed in a post office
massacre that killed 10 people. And then I would just break that
(44:33):
seriousness and go, I'm just kidding guys, I'm so sorry.
It was it was 14, it was 14 people that died.
And so I just kind of yo yoed with their emotions and it it
made me laugh really hard, but the audience was kind of like in
shock and. They're yeah, well, but it's so
I think it's a way to have that outside of you, right.
(44:54):
Yeah, They get to experience what you experience a little bit
like, no, I'm kidding. It's for I was even now I'm
listening to it going wait, I kind of looked it up after you
messaged me and I'm like, wait, it was. 1410 people.
Yeah, so there's that. Do you?
Yeah. What's?
I'm trying to remember other bits, but did you do?
My memory is not very good. Do you do more dark?
(45:14):
But you're saying absurdist? Yeah, so trying to think of that
show, I I told everybody it was my first time doing comedy and
that Limmy found me on the street and then I what was the
next bit? I No, I have the one where I
recently lost 20 lbs and then I say I thought having a testicle
(45:35):
removed would be more masculine.So yeah, it's a.
And then I'm so literal I'm coming up to you afterwards.
And I was like, I should just say yes.
Well, obviously I know it's not a 20 LB testicle.
However, I have see, I do talk about the first testicles I saw
(45:55):
as a kid. Like I was, I was doing a, a, I
was an orthopedic tech. And when I was 17 at this
hospital, I was putting up the overhead frame for hospital
beds. And so I, I walked, I knocked on
a door. The door was closed.
I knocked, but then I didn't wait, which is my big mistake.
And I swung this door open and aman was getting out of bed with
(46:15):
his bottom facing the door. So he was kind of pushing
himself off the bed. And apparently he had mumps in
his testicles because they were the size of grapefruit.
And I mean, those were my first testicles.
And the fact that you ever choseto look again after, or were you
just disappointed? I thought they were huge.
(46:37):
What? Is yeah.
What's wrong with your? Yeah, that's the, that's kind of
where I go is where I go now. All testicles are a
disappointment. Yeah, but it what I mean, 'cause
I was like, oh God, I don't think I was supposed to see
that. And I'm back.
Why is he not wearing a gown? No, he had his gown on, but they
open in the back. Oh, yeah.
And so you're, he's getting, youknow, he was just trying to, and
I could see why he needed the trapeze to lift him himself out
(46:59):
of bed because literally he was pushing himself.
He had those 20 LB balls, man. So I'm just, but so that's, but
the premise is fun. I mean, like you're, you're
like, man, these guy. I, I got big, I got big ones.
And then I like had one big one.Now you have one big one.
But it was, I think I was askingyou because my guest who was on
(47:22):
the week before you, I saw you, was Rick Bryan, who has lost a
testicle to cancer. But I mean, he does.
He did jokes about his. But anyway, I don't know where
I'm going with this other than I'm a bit literal sometimes.
Like I want to know, was there really trauma behind it?
I'm a curious person. Like I want to.
(47:44):
Know, I think I ended with a Bill Clinton sock puppet so that
that wasn't very drama based. Do your impression.
So yeah, the bit is basically that I want to sound smart at
parties because everybody thinksI'm I'm the funny guy.
Like I have a 2 minute party setand I say I do, it's a sock
puppet play with a Bill Clinton sock puppet I made and I pull
(48:06):
him out and I say it builds to this line.
It's a whole big thing with smoke machines.
But at the end he says I did nothave socks with that young
intern and his name is Tua Clinton.
I made him in a meeting when I was probably supposed to be
working. You really did.
Yeah, would you? I mean, I'm there, I'm
listening, I'm talking, but I'm also fabric gluing cotton balls.
(48:26):
Into a sock and and did you build that because you had this
good impression and it came to you that the mixing the sex with
socks? I'm just curious.
I love hearing how people come up with bits like, hey, I've got
this Bill Clinton. It's a little dated now.
I think it used to be better, too.
In high school, I remember we were watching a movie in some
(48:48):
history class because that's what you do in history class.
And Bill Clinton was like good afternoon.
And right after he said it, I was like, good afternoon.
And I did it like perfect. And this girl whipped her head
around like I was the devil. And I was like, I'm going to
keep that in my back pocket. I don't have a ton of
impressions, but that one I I'vekept fresh.
(49:09):
But it gives you confidence. It's like, you know, that, you
know, somebody was like, whoa, what is he?
Yeah. And I just, I think I built the
whole bit around just wanting tohave a sock puppet for exactly 5
seconds because I talk about theword digress.
And then after I do that impression, I say, but I digress
and I take the puppet off 3 people after the show were like,
(49:29):
you have to do more with the puppet.
And I'm like. I think it works because I don't
with. The puppet.
Yeah, Yeah. Just this like it is absurd.
Like all of a sudden I like, I see you on stage, you bring a
little backpack and I was like, what's in the backpack?
What's he doing with the backpack?
Yeah. Yeah, Limmy was a little worried
too. He's like, why does he have a
backpack? Why has he not touched the
(49:49):
backpack? For the first six.
Minutes of the set. And I guess it's awkward to keep
a sock puppet in your pocket, right?
Yeah. Well, maybe.
I thought he had that removed. What maybe?
He goes, yeah, somehow. Maybe you could tie it into that
so you could whip that out here.Yeah, I don't know.
I think the first time I did it I was wearing cargo shorts and
the host of the show was like, that's the only acceptable
(50:11):
reason to wear cargo. Shorts.
I was like, I don't want to get blasted for cargo.
Oh, I know we used to be the guythat used to run our new talent
night at comedy works. His his name is Deacon Gray and
he had a thing, you know, just never wear shorts on stage.
But then it's like Sam talent. He wears shorts all the time.
You. Got to give the people what they
(50:31):
want man, you know? That's my.
Pasty, pasty Anglo legs. So, yeah, I mean, it's one of
those things like it we're comedians, like who's we're not
rule follower. That's the whole point.
I am more of a rule follower comedian probably.
I don't know. I never took a class.
I just got into it too soon where I had to just figure it
(50:51):
out and and of course I'd listento comedy and I knew like
intuitively, I knew the rules ofthrees.
I didn't have it intellectually,but you just know the beats
somehow. You just start writing that way.
It's fun to watch. It'll be interesting to have you
back. I like to have people back every
couple years. I'm who knows if I live this
long or stay committed, but I feel it's the thing.
(51:13):
But to see the the growth of comedians is fun.
But what prompted you to start comedy?
How? Because you're now how old?
I am 43. Years old, you're 43.
And so you started comedy in your 40s and what, what led you
to that moment, do you know? I always wanted to do it like
and I just, I don't know why I didn't start earlier.
(51:35):
I kind of am kicking myself now that I'm doing it.
And I feel like, you know, I'm not a spring chicken.
I'm not not old by any means, but I'm not.
I like that you gesture towards me.
It was a it was a gesture of assuredness.
Not I would. No, I.
No, come on, I did that in subliminal.
I am 64 so I am old but I'm about to get Medicare.
(51:58):
I was doing the MC workshop thispast weekend with Janae Burris.
Oh, cool comedy works. And she mentioned you and John
and she said like, you know, everybody thinks that you need
to be young or relate in this kind of a way.
But then she called out both your names and was.
Like the oldest comics in Denver.
She's like they can go into any room and just crush.
(52:19):
But it is fun to be relatable even at this age.
And I, I don't know that I've heard say, like, I know
obviously it doesn't help for you to go.
I wish I had started sooner. I wish I had started or I start
at 27 And my ex-husband was like, don't you think if you're
meant to do this, you would havedone it by now?
And I'm like, well, we get therewhen we get there.
And what got you there is what I'm curious.
(52:40):
About my oldest was just tired of hearing me talk about it and
I had written and said I had a friend kind of chunk it for me
and try to make a type 5 and I ended up not actually performing
that sat at all. When I ended up doing it, I made
it my 2024 goal. I'm going to do this.
And of course, as the chicken shit that I am, I did it in
(53:01):
July, yeah, July of last year. So it was like my goal for the
year. And then I didn't actually go
and do it. The first time I went, I was
just scouting the mic. I wanted to see what the mic was
like. And I didn't just go do it.
I had to like prepare and do reconnaissance mission so.
But did the first time you did it was at Fort Collins, the
comedy Fort? It was not the first time I did
(53:22):
it. I'm a Boston comic, Nancy.
I It was Jamaica Plain, MA. And so I did it right before
leaving. I, I was like, I already scouted
this mic out. I I should just go and actually
do it before leaving town. And then the next week I drove
out here because we were moving my my oldest graduate high
school and we wanted to buy a house.
(53:42):
And that's not very doable in Boston.
So yeah, did a mic, drove out here, and then my second mic I
did was in Fort Collins. It would have been the sliced
pizza one that they have. And then I started doing the
Fort too, and that's a, that's afantastic room, but was just
terrifying. I'd never been in a spotlight.
(54:04):
Comedy in the dark, basically. Yeah, it's different.
Yeah. So that was.
That's a great room to work out in though, because it's a real
room. It's a real audience.
People come to the mic. It's not just other comics.
It's. And now I'm the opposite.
I went to like a podunk last month in Fleming, Colorado, and
(54:24):
there were like 20 people and I could see all their faces.
And like, for the 1st 2 minutes I was just kind of like nervous
about it because I'm used to that real room, yeah.
Yeah, well, what's next for you?What do you what do you just
continue to work on the craft and doing lots of mics and.
Yeah, so this month my wife is going to you're up.
(54:47):
So I have to stay home with the kid.
So I'm I'm probably just going to focus on writing.
But when she gets back, I'm trying to get tape.
I want to do festivals. That's a goal.
Oh yeah. Step.
I want to get to and I know. And that the comedy Fort, you
can get a lot of good video and also downtown comedy works.
Yeah, the mic, they don't have the videographer at the Fort, so
(55:10):
I got to get on like a a show ora showcase at some point to do
that. But I'm trying to get on thick
skin. The comedy works because that's
that's a 4 minute set. Not be able to grab that tape
trying to get I. I found that for festivals you
need social media, which I'm notfantastic at.
But oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, well, you've done
festivals, but you also have a good social media.
(55:31):
How like? Well, when I did those
festivals, I got to say things have changed in this this short
of time. Sure.
So Boston and Seattle were 2018-2019 pre pandemic.
I think during the pandemic things kind of blew up more on
social media. I don't know, I try.
I'm I'm off the algorithm right now.
I don't, I feel like my social media is kind of flatlining
(55:53):
right now, but it's out there ifanybody wants to tune in.
What's your social media? It is at Chris Phillips Comedy
on Instagram and Chris Phillips Comedy YouTube also.
Oh fantastic. Well, let's follow you.
Let's give Chris some love and some likes.
Check him out. I'm looking forward to seeing
more of your comedy. I I really appreciate getting to
(56:15):
know you better and likewise. Yeah, indubitably.
Indubitably, we're going to put that in as often as possible.
All right, well, and you're getting your daughter out of the
dorm today here in CU and I meanthat's amazing.
I loved I loved that you. I mean, really quickly you told
me that beautiful story how you met her through teaching English
(56:35):
as a second language and met hermom and, and then.
I was that teacher I dated. The kids?
No, she came after you right on Facebook later.
Yeah, this is her fault. Yeah, but that was after she
was. Yeah.
OK, You're no you're. I was a good.
Teacher, You're a good teacher and good boundaries.
Yeah. All right.
Well, thanks for coming by today.
(56:56):
Thanks for having me, I'm appreciate it.
I want to thank my guest Chris Phillips.
Follow Chris Phillips on YouTubeand Instagram at Chris Phillips
Comedy and you can follow me at nancynorton.tv.
And thank you for being a listener, for witnessing and
being part of this Co healing journey.
(57:17):
I want to thank my son NathanielNorton for helping create this
music loop for traumedy. And we do our best to upload an
episode every Tuesday. It's traumedy Tuesdays.
Remember, no matter what, keep laughing.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com